


Burn the White Flag

by phooweep



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-23 19:46:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18556576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phooweep/pseuds/phooweep
Summary: Six helped him kill the last reason he stuck around in Novac, and he had this funny feeling she’d be the death of him. He probably would have asked to go with her, if she hadn’t offered. Snipers do come in pairs, after all, and he had a whole Legion to go after.





	Burn the White Flag

Six helped him kill the last reason he stuck around in Novac, and he had this funny feeling she’d be the death of him. He probably would have asked to go with her, if she hadn’t offered. It was time he stopped hanging out in a giant dinosaur for twelve hours a day.

He learned quickly that she didn’t talk more than she had to. Murmured clips of sentences - “Ferals up ahead,” or, “Saw a deathclaw ‘round here last week. Should skirt around.” The most emotion he saw her express was to that fuckin’ robot that had showed up in Novac a few days before her. It’d wheeled up, greeted folk in a polite, metallic twang, and settled in to wait. 

Not that he’d been watching her specifically - it was his _job_ to watch Novac - but when she arrived in town she’d stopped dead in her tracks at the sight of the damn thing. Turned white as a sheet, let out a stream of cuss words that should’ve shorted out that robot’s circuits, and stormed past it to the entrance of Dinky. Otherwise, she was calmer’n could be expected of someone who’d been shot in the head and buried in a shallow grave. Introduced herself in a matter-of-fact sort of way - “No, I don’t have another name that I know of. Just call me Six. Listen, I have a lead to follow, so if you’re gonna join me, let’s go.”

He didn’t have much to pack. She poked around his room while he filled a rucksack with the necessities, quiet except to ask if she could grab a couple of the books he was planning on leaving behind. She slipped them in her own bag when he nodded, and then they’d angled for Boulder City.

A few days into traveling together was when he found out why she’d flipped out at the robot. It was his watch, and he was staring into the fire thinking up more creative ways to kill Legion fucks than simply blowing their heads off - though that suited them quite well, in his opinion - when she startled awake with a strangled cry. Not quite waking up screaming, but it hardly surprised him. She sat up, a light flush spreading over her cheeks and down her neck as she made eye contact with Boone over the fire. Rubbing at the still-healing scar that ran along the side of her head, hidden by her hair most days, she sighed and answered the question in his quirked eyebrow.

“It’s that robot. Victor. Fuckin’ thing dug me up. Nobody in town could tell me why, and it sure as hell wasn’t talkin’. Thought I’d left it behind at Goodsprings. Thing creeps me out.” She looked away, into the pitch black, eyes searching for the faint outlines of saguaros against the dark of the sky. 

Boone nodded in acknowledgment. “Showed up a few days before you. Wouldn’t talk to us much neither, if it means anything.” He shrugged. “Seems to me someone wants to keep tabs on the life they saved.”

She snorted. “I’m just a courier. Or I was, I guess.” She knocked at her head. “Can’t remember my own fuckin’ name, but that didn’t shake loose.”

He wondered idly what he would remember if he ever died and came back. Dog tags helped with the name situation, depending on how intent folk were on killing him for good. Probably would remember Carla. And that the Legion needed to be taken the fuck out. Curiosity got the best of him: “What else do you remember?”

She thought for a few moments, knees hugged to her chest, one hand sweeping her hair back over the scar on her head. “Not much. I do got a name - Benny - the guy that shot me, pretty sure. Knew I got unfinished business. Knew I got this scar,” she held out her arm for him to examine the raised, shiny lines running down her elbow to her wrist, “from bein’ stupid with flamer fuel. That sorta shit.”

“Boulder City where this Benny is hidin’ out?” he said.

She shrugged. “Maybe. Manny just mentioned the Khans. Seems more likely Benny ditched and is holed up somewhere away from those idiots, if it’s this easy to find ‘em.” Grinning suddenly, she said, “A girl can dream, though.”

He felt an urge to grin back but stopped himself. She let out a sigh and reached for her pack, pulling out one of his old books she’d been working her way through the last few nights. “I’m awake now, anyway. You should get some sleep.”

Shrugging in response, Boone shook out his blanket and lay on his back on his sleeping pad, arms crossed comfortably over his stomach. Despite the dust and grit and hard-packed earth and the wind sweeping out over the desert, he felt more relaxed than he had in...well, since Carla disappeared.

 _Nice to be on the road again. Guy could get used to this,_ Boone’s sleepy brain thought without his permission as he slid into sleep, lulled by the gentle crackling of the fire and the rhythmic turning of the book’s pages.

**Author's Note:**

> first attempt at a more long-form fic that *roughly* follows the plot of new vegas (i did things in a weird order because reasons, ok)
> 
> new vegas is. my favorite. and the wiki describes boone as someone who "vacillates between being a stone-cold killer and a decent human being," which, heck, has been my type from the get-go. 
> 
> so let's get going on this ride. hopefully i'll have time to fully replay this monstrosity of a janky game that hard crashes my xbox every now and again, but otherwise i'm going off of the wiki, my own memories, and the seat of my pants - apologies in advance for lore mistakes and/or like i said above, a weird order of things. 
> 
> also - M rating for now, will be E later on (!!)
> 
> and if you like it, oh my god please comment. i am a ho for comments.


End file.
